


I Will Never Fall

by coriander



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Historical, M/M, Romance, Soviet Union, Tragedy, Tragedy/Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coriander/pseuds/coriander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1989. “I don’t care about that anymore!” Gilbert screeched, and suddenly his voice raised to a pitch. “I don’t <i>want</i> utopia. I want <i>you.</i>” The Soviet Union is dying, and Prussia stands at the precipice. Russia/Prussia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Never Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nylon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/12492) by RobinRocks. 



> For Emma- happy very very _very_ belated birthday, and all the apologies. I hope this angstbucket is enough to appease you.~
> 
> Thanks to RobinRocks for the inspiration, mainly the idea of a nation reviving with a different personality. Also to Soltero for The Communist Love Song, the lyrics of which also had a heavy influence on this piece. And, as always, thanks to Ray for the beta. You guys are the best. <3

“Hey, Ivan. Hey. Hey Ivan.” Gilbert leaned over the bar and rested his head on his elbow, held his empty shot glass up in front of his eyes and peered at Ivan through the Cyrillic characters. “I think...” the glass faltered, “I think you’ve had enough. Gotta be looking out for yourself, big guy like you, eh?”

Ivan downed another shot of vodka - his eleventh - and smiled flatly around his glass. “Do not worry, dorogoy, I will be just fine.” He batted his hand away as he reached out in no particular direction, but assumedly for another shot. “I think it is time to go home, da?”

“Never time to go home! Don’t worry, I can... can carry you home if you can...t.” He sat up and rolled his neck, popping the joints before jerking back forward with an off-kilter grin. “I’m awesome, I’ve carried everyone’s drunk asses home since forever! And you, you’re prob’ly feelin’ a little weak, yeah, what with everything...”

Ivan’s eyes hardened. “That is a dangerous mistake, dorogoy. I am not weak.”

“Sure, sure, sure.” The words slurred together, but Gilbert’s shoulders squared with a sudden lucid sincerity. “But Elizaveta left, Ivan. Feliks too. Walked all over you and out the door. Who’s to say-”

Ivan slammed his glass down onto the bar, shooting a crack up the side. “I am not weak.”

The bartender hastily replaced his glass before ducking away again nervously, but Gilbert was unfazed. “Y’know it’s just ‘cause I worry about you.”

  “It is because you are inebriated.” Ivan stood abruptly and waved sharply at the bartender. “We are finished here. Add it to my tab, da?” In the same movement he grabbed Gilbert by the collar and heaved him to his feet. “You are lucky you are my favorite.”

“Not luck. Skill. Pu-ure skill.” Gilbert sidled up his chest and kissed him on the lips, wet and sloppy and reeking of beer. Ivan kissed back with feigned reluctance, his grip shifting from his collar to his shoulders to hold him upright.

“That’s the Ivan I know,” Gilbert breathed against his jaw. “I won’t ever leave you... so promise me you’ll stay...”

“Of course I will stay.” Powerful. Commanding. On top of the world. “I’ve told you, zaychick, utopia will come, and I will lead us there. We are close. And soon we will all be one.”

“And _that’s_ the Ivan I love.” Gilbert gave a toothy grin. “Tell me more about world domination ‘cause uh-huh, not that I’m not the awesomest, but you’re pretty awesome when you dominate...”

He latched onto his arm and stayed there, all the way home and all the way to bed. The dark and broken street lights were fortunate, Ivan thought, so Gilbert couldn’t see how lost he was.

*

Moscow’s first snow came early that winter, as though telling of the avalanche to come. By November the city was snowed in up to its rooftops and Russia realized, with more uneasiness than he’d admit, that he no longer had it in him to force Latvia to shovel the doorstep.

He usually occupied days like these with paperwork, fueling the fire pit with coal while writing off the monthly quotas for miscellaneous economic necessities. Oranges, baby wipes, yarn spools, clocks. Coffins. Tile. He was running out of tiles himself, his floor a splintered and tearing mess, but a few less couldn’t hurt. One of England’s more irritating leaders had tried to tell him that a Western economy would decrease his work load; but Mrs. Thatcher probably hadn’t had the pleasure of raising the nuclear quota.

He sneezed, and the entire set of papers spread across the table went speckled with mucus. His brow creased into a frown as he rubbed at one of the specks with the pad of his thumb. It wouldn’t do to be getting sick now, not when he’d called for such a steep reduction in cough syrup. Not with so much to do.

He was near startled out of his seat by the doorbell, sounding out through the snow and the leaky roof over his kitchen. He hadn’t even known the old chime still worked, much less that anyone would - or could - get as far as his door in this kind of weather, at this time of night. He wound his scarf round his neck and grabbed his pipe before coming to the door, fully prepared to politely let any burglar know that they best not mess with their nation.

He kicked open the door with the toe of his boot, and blinked. Prussia.

“Jeezus fuck Ivan, you look like you’re about to kill something!”

  Ivan tilted his head, then realized he’d pulled the lead pipe into a cricket bat grip, ready behind his ear. He lowered it to his side with a jovial smile. “Good evening, dorogoy. What brings you to Russia?”

“The beautiful weather,” he snarked through chattering teeth, his hands wrapped round his elbows. He wore a torn winter coat, a size too large and likely a hand-me-down from Ludwig, and jeans with holes torn by the jagged edges of something rusty. He had a makeshift pack slung over his shoulder, bulging at the seams, that looked like it was made from a tablecloth and rubber bands.

He noticed Ivan’s eyes studying the bullet hole in his sleeve. “Do I look like a hobo? ‘Cause I am.” A violent shiver ran up his spine, but he recovered into something of an unsteady man-pose. “I’m trying to romanticize it. Is it sexy?”

“Indeed.” Ivan shook himself, as though out of his thoughts. “Come in.”

“Thanks. Real generous, you are. Letting me in out of the cold.” Gilbert tracked snow into the hallway and shook the boots off his frozen toes. “Next thing you know you’ll be making me hot chocolate and giving me a back massage. Damn, what I’d give for a back massage. Don’t suppose you’re feeling generous, eh?”

  Ivan just watched him curiously. “Why are you here?"

“Told you. I’m a hobo.” Gilbert shoved his wet coat into his arms as he pushed past him into the kitchen. “Got nothing. Zilch. Zero.” He knelt down on one knee to rifle through the cabinets. “Where do you keep your coffee? Not the poisoned stuff for America, I mean the actual coffee.”

“Second drawer.” Ivan continued to stare in fascination faded to concern faded to a forced expression of apathy. “How did you become homeless? Did something happen?”

  “Did something happen, he asks.” Gilbert laughed humorlessly. “You’ve heard about the Wall, haven’t you? You can’t not have, not even in your stupid little igloo.”

“Yes, well.” Ivan finally moves to help him, pulling his old coffee maker from under the sink and setting it on the counter. “News is news, da? I still did not expect you on my doorstep.”

“Germany is unified now,” Gilbert said sourly, his hands tight around the coffee packet. “ _Die Wende_ , they’re calling it. And guess who’s the de facto personification of unified Germany? I’ll give you a hint: not me.”

“Ludwig kicked you out?”

“I left,” he corrected, before the words had even left his mouth. “They have no use for me there, not anymore. Not in the West. And I don’t need West’s pity.”

Ivan took the coffee from him and started the machine. It bubbled and screeched to life, as though walking on its last limbs. He added water in a loose, tired motion. “Then what do you expect from me?”

  “Nothing more than a piece of the pie, of course.” He held his hands over the head of the coffee maker, and it was only then that Ivan saw they were chapped, peeling and white with cold. “Every worker gets a share, right? I’m here for the ideals. For the utopia. For you.” He looked at Ivan earnestly for a moment, as he had a habit of doing, before breaking into a sardonic laughter. “West calls it Stockholm Syndrome.”

“I think that is very admirable,” Ivan replied, at length.

His jaw twitched into a crooked smile. “Glad you think so. ‘Cause I could use some body heat, and I’m thinking either you fuck me tonight or you let me thaw my frozen cock up your ass.”

Ivan’s lip curled into a pout. “That is crude, not to mention an unfair request.”

“Hey man, all’s fair in love and war.” Gilbert looked up at him with blood in his eyes. “And this is both.”

*

Gilbert wakes in the middle of the night to Ivan’s warm breath against his neck. He turns onto his side and twirls a lock of ashen hair between his fingers, admiring how Ivan could look both commanding and gentle all at once, even in sleep.

He sighs, curls up against his chest and whispers quietly, inaudibly: “ _Ich glaube ich sterbe_ , Ivan.”

*

Ivan wakes as the sun rises, and as even the orange light in the window is cold.

“ _Minya turja,_ Gilbert. _Minya turja_.”

*

The next time Russia coughed all over the morning paper, he sprinkled it in red.

“Goddamnit Ivan, Russian’s hard enough to read as it is,” Gilbert complained, in a whine that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maybe... maybe you should go back to bed. I’ll make you wurst, or something. I know you secretly like wurst.”

“I do not,” Ivan replied, with little conviction. He stared down at the blood, fittingly spread across the dark headlines. “Do not worry, it is probably just a cold. It will pass.”

It didn’t pass. Ivan weakened visibly with each revolution and by the time Lithuania left, he was too ill and too bedridden to say much about it. The continuing violence in Romania continued to drag him down, to the point he wished the sullen little boy would just go already. He could only smile to himself as he heard Gilbert giving Toris an earful on the phone in the other room - _You bastard, you didn’t even come to say goodbye._ And later, when he drifted back to consciousness: _You don’t know him like I do_.

Ah, Gilbert. He had always been his favorite.

“Hey, Ivan. Hey.” Suddenly his face was floating over him, his eyes wide and red with concern. “How’re you feeling? C-can I get you anything? I’m getting real good with that tea set, Russian tea...”

Ivan chuckled weakly, rich with mirth. “Do not bother, dorogoy. I believe I am past the point where you can save me.”

  “Don’t talk like that!” Gilbert yelped with sudden anger, his hands clenched tight into fists. “You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna lead the world to utopia. You told me you would lead the world to utopia!”

  “But Gilbert, I...” his face fell. “I am so very weak.”

“Stop. Stop. _Stop._ ” Gilbert slammed a hand down onto the nightstand. “You have to keep fighting, Ivan! For the Soviets. For the people. For everything Russia stands for!”

“You underestimate me, zaychick.” Ivan closed his eyes. “I have died a million deaths, but I have never stopped being Russia. Things will not change.”

“Things might not. But you will.” Gilbert looked away; even with his eyes closed, Ivan could probably see his emotion. His _fear._

Because even if Russia stayed the same, tragically the same, throughout and across time, he couldn’t promise that Ivan would be the same. He might not be his Ivan.

He might not love Gilbert.

It was rare for a nation to revive with the same personality they died with. That was how nations and regimes changed throughout the ages, how they kept with the times. It was rarer still for two personalities to be compatible with one another, and rarer yet for it to happen more than once. Gilbert himself had died and revived countless times, on the battlefield, drowned in the river Jordan and in the Rhine; and only once had he been compatible with Ivan, just this once, just this Ivan. His powerful, pensive, intimidating, idealistic, giant gentle Ivan. Russias past had wallowed in self-pity, poverty, and disarray, tragically and over and over again for centuries; this Ivan wanted to overcome that. Not just for himself, but for Gilbert. For the world.

For utopia.

“We will still have our communist utopia,” Ivan mumbled, eyes still closed. “It is inevitable. It has always been inevitable.”

“I don’t care about that anymore!” Gilbert screeched, and suddenly his voice raised to a pitch. “I don’t _want_ utopia. I want _you._ ”

He kissed him, with all the fire and intensity of everything they stood for, fought for, fell for. And Ivan kissed back because though he would never say it, this Ivan was too strong, too emotionally removed, Gilbert could feel that he still loved him too, and it was that kind of strength that would carry them forward.

“Well get through this,” Gilbert said.

Ivan smiled. “I love you.”

Gilbert faltered. The dim lights were fortunate, he thought, so Ivan couldn’t see how lost he was.

*

Glibert doesn’t sleep.

“ _Ni pukyudai minya,_ ” he whispers into his throat.

*

When the Warsaw Pact dissolved, so did Ivan. He didn’t wake up that morning, or the morning after, and it was all Gilbert to do to keep his stupid excuse for a newly elected parliament from bashing in the front door.

“I won’t let them get you,” he told him as he changed his bedsheets, working carefully around his eerily prone form. “You owe me for this. You owe me big. We’d better have the most mindblowingly awesome sex ever when you wake up. Talk about a boost for the economy, eh?”

He held his limp hand as he watched the attempted coup and the shit show fallout on the fuzzy old satellite TV, as tanks rolled towards the Kremlin and Gorbachev disappeared behind closed doors. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad for you to be like me,” he murmured, wistful. “It ain’t so bad, being a dead nation. I’ve got freedom now. Not quite a ghost but I do a great job of haunting you, don’t I?” he laughed bitterly, to himself. “We could haunt the world together, you an I. In our own utopia.”

He wondered if Ivan’s was pain. He supposed it didn’t matter one way or the other; Ivan had always liked a little stab in his side. Regardless, he thought he should have been glad when Yeltsin stood atop the tanks and declared a free and sovereign Russia, when the Soviet Union breathed its last breath. Perhaps Ivan was happier now.

If only it were his Ivan.

He pulled the bedsheets over the corpse and kept vigil for two days. Two days of barricading the doors and yelling at Yeltsin over the phone, at the KGB chief, and that goddamn creepy sister of his. He lit candles and set them on the night stand, for no particular reason, but candles seemed like something he ought to do. It was nice. Somber.

He set up a little shrine of objects - a sunflower, a copy of _Anna Karenina,_ a photograph of Peter the Great, wrapped in a scrap of fur-lined cloth from one of his favorite military coats, the crimson hammer and sickle pin still attached to the lapel. He added some of Ivan’s cherished battle medals, from the Kievan Rus to Leningrad, and went to practice his Russian in front of the mirror. The revived Russia would need all these things; a reminder of self, the sound of his language. And Gilbert was determined to give it to him himself.

The KGB had other plans. Guns beat down the door on the morning of the third day and Yeltsin walked right in, reeking of arrogance like a hero at war. Gilbert stared him down, unwavering. He was _Prussia,_ for god’s sake. He would not be dragged out by a bunch of mortals with toy guns.

“Five minutes, that’s all you get!” he screamed as the soldiers pulled him out by the elbows with an Kalashnikov at his temple. “Five fucking minutes, and not a second longer!”

It went on for five hours. When Yeltsin finally left and let him back in, it was just as he feared; the new Russia had revived in his absence.

“Be careful,” Yeltsin warned, his eyes twinkling with cruel _amusement._ “My country is no longer your fuck toy.”

_No no no no nein nein **nein**._

He pushed into the room with vigorous force. “Ivan...?”

The purple eyes fixed on him with a swirl of something unidentifiable - longing, regret - that faded as quickly as it surfaced, dampened by something invisible, heavy. Gilbert felt it drape over him like a weighted blanket; this Ivan was no longer his.

He looked like he was trying to sit up, but only made it to his elbows. He lacked _drive_.

“Ivan, I...”

  His eyes flicked up sharply at the sound. Gilbert went silent as he met them, suddenly filled with a terrible dread.

“Do not call me that,” he said quietly, his accent heavy. “I am Russia now, and Russia alone.”

Gilbert swallowed. “And our utopia...?”

“Not possible.” Russia stared down at the bloodied bedsheets. “Boris says we must begin to privatize our economy. I see he is right.”

“And me?”

He looked up at him without emotion. “I suppose you expect me to love you?” He folded his hands round the copy of Tolstoy. “Thank you for the little exhibit. It helped me to remember. Although, as Boris put it, I’m to tell you I’m no longer your... ah. No longer your fuck toy.”

“Do you feel...nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

“Okay... okay.” Gilbert forced a laugh. Hadn’t he expected as much?

“Good, I am glad we got that settled. That could have been awkward, da?”  “Yeah. Awkward.” Gilbert looked to the ceiling with tears in his eyes. He knew there was nothing he could say to persuade him.

Russia stared at him curiously. “Are you crying?”

“No!” he snapped automatically, his knuckles flying to his eyes. “I mean... fine, maybe I am. Let me have my tears, you bastard. It’s all I’ve got left of him.”

The newly revived nation at least had the grace to pretend to look hurt. “I am still here, Prussia. Is that not enough for you?”

“It’ll never be enough for me now, Ivan.” Gilbert forced a wry smile. “I’m afraid I’ve seen the best of you.”

“A pity.” Russia tilted his head, and produced a rifle from beneath the sheets.

“Holy fuck what-” Gilbert held his hands up warily. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

“I am told I once had a penchant for killing,” Russian observed, as though in for a scholarly report. “That urge is not one I possess as of now, though I was told to kill you should you cause trouble.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Gilbert backed away slowly, hands above his head. “That escalated _real_ quickly. Why don’t you put the gun down, I’ll go...”

Ivan still looked at him studiously, as though entranced by an interesting specimen. “Do you not want to be put out of your misery?”

  “Not particularly. Don’t like dying. ‘Sides,” he hesitated, for just a second, “You may not love me anymore, I may not be your favorite, but... I’m still awesome, right?”

“Hm.” Russia evaluated the statement, then smiled childishly. “I don’t particularly care.”

*

“Ivan! Hey, Ivan!”

Gilbert waves him down at the airport, swoops up beside him and picks up one of his bags. “It’s about time you came to visit. I was worrying you’d forget all your German.”

“Not to worry, I believe I can still safely navigate your streets.” He kisses him as though to confirm it, and Gilbert kisses back with equal enthusiasm because fuck the public, covert displays of affection are for West.

“Did you miss me?” he asks confidently, as they slide side by side into a cab.

“A silly question, of course I missed you.” He presses another kiss to his cheek. “And your sad pathetic country. I am always happy to see how far mine has come.”

“Shut up.” Gilbert elbows him in the ribs, grinning from ear to ear. “I think you’re just jealous.”

“Of you? Of course not.” Russia smiles right back, his eyes crescent-shaped and lit with familiar dimples. “Your success is my success, your achievements mine as well. Am I not right?”

“Never been righter. We’re on our way to utopia, you and I.” Gilbert takes his hand, and traces the lines of his palm with his thumb. “Together we are strong.”

*

_And if you’re ever less than certain_  
 _I will be your iron curtain_  
 _I will be your Berlin Wall_  
 _And I will never fall_

**Author's Note:**

> Historical notes:
> 
> -The first part takes place in the autumn of 1989. In Poland, popular strikes across the country forced Soviet leaders to negotiate with the Polish Solidarity movement, which led to open legislative elections in June 1989 and paved the way for a stream of democratic revolutions. The Communist Party of Hungary reconvened as the Hungarian Socialist Party in October 1989, and held their first free elections in early 1990. The Soviet Union signed an agreement for the withdrawal of its troops from Hungary within the next two years.
> 
> -Germany was next to go after Poland and Hungary; the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.
> 
> -Translations:  
> Ich glaube ich sterbe - I think I’m dying  
> Minya turja - me too  
> Ni pukyudai minya - don’t leave me  
> Many apologies, these translations are from google. If you have something more accurate, do let me know!


End file.
